Wise Potato Chips Sued for Allegedly "Underfilling" Bags

Let the chips fall where they may.

There’s a feeling of disappointment that all snack aficionados are familiar with: the sting of opening your favorite bag of potato chips, only to realize the bag is half-empty. When you’re in the throes of a snack attack, the sadness of not having as many chips as you anticipated for your Netflix binge can be a serious blow. We’ve all been there, and while many of us are likely to just shrug it off and finish the bag anyway, two people are seeing their chip bags as half empty instead of half full.

According to BuzzFeed, two customers have filed a lawsuit against Wise Snacks, alleging they were tricked into paying more for chip bags that were underfilled.

Sameline Alce from New York City and Desiré Nugent from Washington D.C., accused Wise of “systematically underfilling their chip bags.” The pair say that “they are buying more than what is actually being sold, thus deceiving them into making purchases they would not make at the given prices did they know the truth.” In fact, they believe their purchases “denied the benefit of their bargain.”

Detailed photo images, complete with lines to mark where the chips were filled up to, accompany the lawsuit. In the pictures, the plaintiffs also use smaller size Wise chip bags to show how little product a 10-ounce bag of chips comes with, along with pictures of other brands of potato chips that come in “more consistently filled bags.”

Extra air does accompany all bags of potato chips, as the “slack fill” of nitrogen gas is intentionally placed to keep your chips fresh and free of delivery damage Mentalfloss explains. In 1966, a Federal Fair Packaging and Labeling Act was passed requiring manufacturers to clearly label the net weight of their product, in hopes to possibly prevent an incident like this.

Though Sameline and Desiré are the only ones participating in the lawsuit, social media is filled with users, like Allison Rose, Jcarrio and more tweeting underfilled chip bags at Wise. We’ll have to wait and see where the lawsuit leads, but in the meantime, there’s plenty of snack options that can fill the space potato chips leave behind.